A Christmas Yuleblog

Ta daaaaaaa! Here's is my very first share of the 2009 Christmas downloading season. While on a search and rescue mission earlier this year , I found this album in a thrift store on the north side of Chicago. It was the only Christmas album in the entire pile of albums (and with this economy, 50 cents ain't too shabby!). Released in 1956 on the Mercury label, Carlos Salzedo , a well-respected and renowned harpist of his time, plays 20 favorite Christmas carols ranging from "Adeste Fideles", "Jingle Bells", and "Silent Night". And as the cover states, they are in "Hi Fi", making the whole album THAT much more special! Salzedo was a child prodigy, composing his first piece of his at the tender age of five! His love of music is in full evidence here as many of these tracks are "Concert Variations on..." (code for his own arrangements of the songs). Many of these last under 1:15 - this is a quick but fun listen! Judge ...

Many times I've come across this album in thrift stores, online vinyl markets, and even eBay and Amazon.com. Two silouetted harps in black and white tell the story. What I didn't know was the connection this album had to my hometown of Fort Wayne until I had a copy in my hands. It seems not only were one of the harpists (Escosa) had deep roots in Fort Wayne but it was actually recorded here as well on the Carriage Records label. Side one is The Christmas Story according to St. Mark. Written and narrated by Longstreth, this full 15 minute story is interspersed with lovely music for solo harp (Escosa). Side two has the harpists trading off each other as they go through ten different Christmas carols. Nothing fancy but it's well done Christmas harp. One free day this past summer, I went looking for the location of the recording studio listed on the back cover. Located in a iffy part of town, I managed to find it - an empty lot full of grass and trees. Nothing to...

This was a from a lot of Christmas records I purchased from a Canadian dealer off eBay earlier this year. Robert Maxwell was a songwriter (he wrote "Ebb Tide") and harpist innovator. This was a man who wired his harp into a light display back in the late 1950s for club appearances and was considered in the same light as Ferrante & Teicher in the way he produced sound from the harp. Maxwell composed a number of songs and instrumental pieces, including the exotica standard, "Ebb Tide," and "Shangri-La," which gave him a Top 40 hit in 1964 after Jackie Gleason began using it on his variety show - a mere 18 years after Maxwell first composed it! Another of Maxwell's pseudonyms is familiar to any fans of "The Ernie Kovacs Show": The Nairobi Trio. Maxwell wrote " Solfeggio: The Song of the Nairobi Trio ," which played along with the recurring bit about the trio of mechanical monkey musicians. I had been looking for a Chris...

Our next offering is of the quiet variety... and it doesn't get more quiet than Christmas harp. Mention the harp and some people think immediately of Harpo Marx . Others think of Robert Maxwell . Or Bianco . How about DeWayne Fulton? Anyone? I found this record at a garage sale for the very low price of free. As the family thanked me for taking a small stack of albums off their hands, I asked for more info on this album. "It was one of our uncle's albums and he never played it at all." was all I could get. Google searches came up with very little until I came across a cryptic web entry ( http://tns-www.lcs.mit.edu/harp/fhj/g.html ) that listed an interview with Fulton from the Folk Harp Journal . According to the interview, DeWayne Fulton was a founding father in pop/jazz harp. He recorded sixteen albums over his long career, played for Emperor Hirohito and Presidents Lyndon Johnson & Ronald Reagan, studied at Julliard, the Vienna Academy of Music, ...

Not only was this album downloaded at Ernie (not Bert)'s blog late last year but it holds the distinction for having the longest title of ANY Christmas album reviewed here! Woe to the poor guy who had to give the stage announcement whenever Bianco played a concert! Late last month, Ernie stated in a post at his blog that Bianco was one of his top three harpists of all time. The other two are Robert Maxwell and a Marxist named Harpo. Maxwell or Harpo were the only harpists I thought I knew existed, the rest were anonymous pluckers of the golden strings. So let's spend some time finding Bianco (not Nemo). Born Eugene Capobianco in 1927, he began studying the harp as a boy under the tutelage of his father Fillippo, himself a successful harpist from the old country in Italy, and Marcel Grandjany, an early star of the classical harp. Gene studyed at Juilliard and after graduation played the classical harp circuit for several years. However, his love for jazz drove him ...